Prayer

In 2005 I travelled to North Africa for the first time in my life. I went with a group of graduate students and professors from my university, including the lanky sad-eyed boy I was dating at the time. We saw a lot of things on that trip but the one that left the deepest imprints on my heart was a visit we made to a makeshift orphanage in the middle of almost nowhere. About fifty children from age three to sixteen lived behind sandbag and barbwire walls guarded by soldiers weighed down with heavy weaponry. They had been rescued by these soldiers and the half-crazy preacher/commando who lead them when they snatched them from the clutches of Joseph Kony and his sadistic followers. I remember feeling paralyzed with helplessness as we led the group of children in silly songs and games. Every frail body we held had been sexually assaulted. Every pair of eyes we looked into had seen murder. Every limp hand in ours had been forced to do God knows what. I smiled through several hand-waving verses of “Father Abraham” all the while concentrating on not throwing up.

I came back from that trip having suffered no more than a few blisters and some sunburn. But I felt like my heart was carrying someone else’s scars. I remember kneeling to pray in a quiet prayer room somewhere on my Christian university campus. An air-conditioned place with soft lamp light and a small decorative fountain trickling somewhere in the background. And I felt paralyzed again. I had no words. For the first time in my life I felt in the presence of someone less … comfortable, than I had always known him to be. I was broken-hearted and enraged by the small sip of injustice and suffering I had tasted. The emotion that must well up inside the one I worshipped made me tremble. That trip was the catalyst for questions I had never asked before.

I have felt that way again this week.

I’m not entirely sure why. I don’t know if it just a delayed processing of our experiences and those of our friends in North Africa. I don’t know if motherhood is making me soft. I don’t know if praying for the heart of God is happening. And that terrifies me. What a dangerous thing to pray for…

I read the news from around the world, from some places so far away I can hardly imagine them and others frighteningly familiar, and my heart freezes. Syria. Italy. Somalia. The United States. Unspeakable suffering is happening around the world constantly. And if I let myself dwell on it, I just feel completely overwhelmed.

That lanky sad-eyed boy I married took a Trauma Healing training course last week. He received tools for helping people cope with trauma that we hope will be a blessing to many of the refugees we plan to work with soon. A couple nights ago, when I was pouring out my soul to him in the dark, hours after we had turned out the light he mentioned that questioning God’s goodness, God’s trust-worthiness is one of the biggest things people who have been through trauma wrestle with. And when he said that I burst into tears.

I don’t necessarily feel like those are my questions. They are not ones I have a right to. But there are people I love who do. So the questions are closer than they used to be. They are no longer cliché. For reasons I don’t fully understand they are the ones that make me cry.

Sometimes I feel like all I really have is metaphor. It’s how I understand the world. It’s often the only thing that really makes sense to me. It’s also the only thing I feel like I have to describe where I am, what I feel and believe. I told Bryan a couple nights ago that I feel like I am in a dark room, not scary dark, but comforting and safe. In the room is a carved piece of stone that I am holding onto. It is a part of a wall or a column maybe. I have been here in this room for a long time. I know every groove in the rock, every shape it traces under my hands. It is worn smooth from years of my touch. I know it well and I love it. But something has pushed me forward in the dark and as I reach out to steady myself, my hands have brushed against more rock and more carvings. With a thrill of fear and wonder I realize that the stone I have clung to in the dark is only a fraction of all that there is, only a part of a much bigger design. I feel new patterns and texture under my fingertips and I know it stretches on forever. I am realizing that the room is enormous, bigger than I ever dreamed it could be.

That’s where I am right now, gathering the courage to keep moving forward, not just to cling to the beauty I know, but to seek all that it is a part of.  

Mother's Day

Several people asked me on Sunday if this was my first Mother’s Day. I told them it wasn’t. Last year Annabelle was a couple weeks old and we all went out to eat a fancy meal in Nairobi after church. She was still wrinkled and blurry-eyed and I was still puffy and severely sleep-deprived. But in the pictures you can tell we are all so happy.

This Mother’s Day was only the second of what I hope will be years and years of celebrating. But I have to admit, this year was one for the books. If you know me at all you know I can hardly ever keep my own secrets to myself. And this space, though public, feels an awful lot like journaling to me sometimes. So I apologize if the following post strikes you as a little premature, a little too intimate, a little too much of me. If a big ol’ slice of the raw inside of my heart is not what you are looking for this morning, you should read something else.

On Sunday morning I sat down in my pajamas to a big cup of coffee. It had the perfect amount of thick vanilla cream swirled though (at least a third of the cup) and was steaming perfectly. Bryan was on the phone with his dad who had just called to wish him a happy birthday and Annabelle was playing with her singing teapot in the living room. I was just about to take a big delicious sip of my morning brew when a thought crossed my mind that made me pause. It was a highly unlikely thought. I came really close to shrugging it off and drinking my coffee down. But it left just enough residue of doubt in my mind, just enough “What if..” that I sat my warm mug down and went to the bathroom.  

I pulled out the box of “just-in-case” pregnancy tests and opened it without looking at the instructions. In my mind this was just a quick act to give me peace of mind. The ticket to another month of guilt-free caramel macchiatos and sushi. I gave the test a cursory glance – no sign of changes – and started to put on deodorant. I piddled around for a couple of minutes and then glanced back down at the test as I started out the door. When I saw that faint blue line I nearly passed out.  

Let me first just say this is exactly what I wanted to happen (sorta). Last time we did this I spent six months paying attention to every little twinge of my body, peeing on sticks and crying at disappointments. In a world where six months to wait for a baby is shamelessly misplaced emotion, I was a tad bit dramatic. And I didn’t want to do that this time. I wanted to be open to possibilities and free from anxiety. Whatever happens will happen in its own time. No great hopes or great fears. Just…whatever, whenever. Well, the first month we were ahem, “open to possibilities” whatever happens will happen happened.

I ushered Bryan into the bathroom mumbling something about needing a second opinion. He was grumbling thinking I was worried that some new dress made me look fat (as if that has ever happened). But when I showed him the test, he was quiet for a moment and then, to my intense relief and joy, he started laughing. Then he kissed me. How I love that man…

I am thrilled. Sobered perhaps by having children less than two years apart, but ridiculously happy. You can’t think of new life and not just be overwhelmed with joy! I am guarded. This is all still very early. I am not too naïve to realize that things could still happen. I feel a little guilty, though I know that’s silly. I have so many dear friends and family members I have who are struggling with waiting (we’re talking years, not months), trying, miscarriages, failed adoptions, and loss.    

Most of all I think I am just grateful. I can’t stop thinking “Thank you so much!” I feel like I have been given such a gift. One that I know I don’t deserve. There is something about bearing a miracle in your own body that is incredibly centering. The future is complicated, daunting and a bit overwhelming sometimes. But today I am a Mama. Today, by God’s Grace, I am a keeper of life whether by washing sticky fingers or taking a prenatal vitamin or praying for help to do it all well.

This Mother’s Day was not at all what I was expecting. But it held surprising joy. I am still reveling in the precious gift I have received.

Mother's Day 2011 

Mother's Day 2012

Farm

I am writing this from a wide brick house in the middle of a cotton field in West Texas. Well, I say cotton even though that won’t be growing outside for several months. Right now it's just a field. I see cows lumbering by in the dusty distance and a deep green machines resting on the side of the barn. A long sprinkler system stretches lanky metal arms across the field. Rabbits twitch in the back yard. When I sit out there in the afternoon, listening to wind chimes play in the background and feeling sharp grass underfoot, I feel happy someplace deep down that only smiles for very special occasions.

Though I’ve been coming to this house of my father’s oldest sister for as long as I can remember, I still know precious little about farming other than it can be stressful. This week alone my uncle has been hard at work plowing, mending fences, spraying weeds and swathing alfalfa so it will be ready for baling. The walls of the house are coated in decades of prayers for rain. And yet this farm has always been a haven of peace for me. I sit on the back porch swing and breathe in the smell of dirt and grass and cows, and muscles I didn’t even know were tight start to let go.

Yesterday I was driving to town and got hit by a dust-devil boiling across the road like it was a column of dirt leading a nation of tumble-weeds through the desert. It passed and I watched it trudge across the flatness towards the perfectly rounded horizon. I was surprised to realize in that moment how much like home this feels. Or a home, anyway. My Georgia-bred husband looks around and asks where all the trees are. He says he never knew people actually wore cowboy hats outside of October 31^st until he met my cousins. I look around and marvel at how safe this bizarrely barren world makes me feel. As though my own wandering body recognizes its birthplace.

I didn’t feel that way as a kid. But now, in a season of transience, I feel a thirst for roots that this place slakes. I am surprised by this feeling, but not unpleased. Perhaps in a life spent seeking out strangely beautiful pockets of the world, it is nice to know I have one of my own. In some ways equally unfamiliar, but a place to be from. We need those places. I need those places.